www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Econet Wireless Zimbabwe has reportedly started employing mobile network equipment worth USD200 million through contracts with Ericsson of Sweden and China’s ZTE. The installation of base station and core network equipment is scheduled to be in July  and December, with expansion and upgrades in northern parts of the country being carried out by Ericsson and southern regions the responsibility of ZTE, and the rollout cost split approximately 50/50 between the two vendors.

Econet said that the infrastructure consignment represents only 15% of its planned rollout to take its GSM network capacity to five million users by the end of 2010. Presently, Econet is selling more than 30,000 new pre-paid ‘Buddie’ lines per week, whilst post-paid contracts are freely available on demand.